I shouldn’t be writing this poem.
I should be working on my book.
Or my other book.
Or one of my essay ideas.
But poems are so sweet and tasty.
I would have failed Mischel’s test before he left the room.
Writing a book is such a long arduous process
But a poem
From concept to finish
Takes a couple of hours.
There is no research involved–
I might look up someone’s name.
I could do some thinking work
Seated at the long wooden table in the research laboratory
Staring at the fluffy lump of gratification in front of me
…I need to study Wittgenstein, and go over the Gorgias again…this scene has to be just right…
I might mean something to someone
I might make some money
I might become an author
Then again, I noticed something today
A small detail that I could make meaningful
An image that seemed poignant
A phrase that bit into me
It could be delicious with a touch of processing.
It’s right in front of me, on a pink porcelain plate.
Cylindrical and lopsided
And velvety smooth
The fleeting sweetness of a poem
Would not leave me for so long
With the burden of possibility
I haven’t written a word of the book in months.
Perhaps I don’t believe it will be as gratifying
As a completed poem–
A moment on the lips…
To struggle in the laboratory
For only a pair of marshmallows
Is a cruel punishment.
poetry
Ode to the Lint in My Belly Button (2011)
Originally published in Tributaries (2011)
Oh lint in my bellybutton,
Whence comest thou?
Surely you,
Who keeps my navel warm at night,
Are the manifestation of love
And warmth,
And all things good,
Which cradle in the center
Of my being.
Lint, though you are gray,
Do not despair!
Those who wash you out
Are empty inside,
Where I am full.
Oh lint in my bellybutton,
How I miss thee so,
When I search
And find naught
In the center of my being.
Lint, you Omphalic dust
Collecting in the center of life,
I mourn for the outties
Who do not know you.
Lint you gay gathering
Of dust and of hair,
May you ever return to my navel:
May we ever be paired.
Up and Down (12/21/06)
She crossed my mind today like
a long, slow train crossing a busy road.
You know, she always seems to do
that to me when I’m under a heavy load.
I tell myself “what does it matter?”
It matters, ’cause it makes me feel so...
Sometimes I look around me and what
I see is something I’ve never seen before.
And sometimes I listen to people and
it seems they’re asking me to open a door.
There are times when everything seems
so common I can't take any more
But every once in a while I feel so...
I can tell right now I can’t
make up my mind
but I’m pretty sure
I don’t know.
More often than not things seem far more
black than white.
And when I wake up those same
gray shades get so very light—
Sometimes it makes me feel so...
You know I’m blind sometimes
and sometimes I see everything.
Times do come when even I tire of all my bitching.
She’ll cross my mind tomorrow like a long slow
train stopping across a busy road.
You know she can do that to me no matter
how heavy the load.
And I’ll think to myself “It doesn’t matter
at all,” but then I’ll look out the window
and see how the traffic has stalled.
Gulf
“How's the woodworking going?”
James must be thinking of my brother
“It's alright,” I offer
Have you sold anything?
“No, nothing,” I say.
“It’s a hard business to break into. A lot of people don’t appreciate it.”
He tells me about a jewelry box he made that his daughter didn't want.
I have little patience for strangers.
I don't often care to disabuse them.
They call me the wrong name
I answer their questions
About things I haven't done.
I only have so much of myself
to give away.
I’ll ask the therapist on Wednesday,
“What's wrong with me? Why is it so hard to connect with others?”
It seems like there should be some kind of answer.
Something must have happened
To make me so alien
So haughty and undeserving of kinship
Strangers tell me happy birthday
And I am angry they know something about me
Dad asks me if I’m alright.
I very clearly am not. I have been trying to keep it together
So that no one will ask me what’s wrong.
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t challenge the lie.
Minutes later I break the silence:
“Well,
I’m going home.”
Button
I haven’t wanted to ask this.
I’ve been afraid asking would be the end of our relationship.
But I’ve already wasted so much time and energy trying to figure out if
I imagined our connection—if
I’m imagining the disconnection.
Reality is hard to grasp through mania and depression,
Every crumb of attention starts the cycle over.
The truth is, our relationship ended a long time ago.
I just hadn’t figured it out until recently.
What exists now is two people who used to know each other,
Being friendly from time to time.
So what is there to be afraid of?
I’ve spent a lot of time replaying our conversations,
Trying to understand when things changed.
I am profoundly wounded that you couldn’t say, “Something’s happened. I need space.”
A friend would have said, “This isn’t working.
You need to work on this.”
So I need to know if we're friends.
What happened?
Why did things change?
Severed Connection
Late nights for days–
unable to sleep or focus or do anything,
racing thoughts down the freeway.
I was thinking of the women I know and how lovely they are,
when something reminded me of you, and I reached out–
and you were excited about the people
who still matter to you
I slept last night.
No more racing.
I was thinking how I used to be part of your life,
and how quietly you slipped away.
You didn’t even leave a note.
I sat in a chair,
thinking at nothing,
until I felt bad
Bitter thoughts may be cruel–
but joy is no ally.
The good days are a Trojan Horse.
The bad days are reality.
And each day rewrites the last,
except when emptiness comes–
and both inside and outside the horse,
there is
nothing.
Sometimes
I finished reading and slipped to the back of the crowd.
“I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
We were both surprised.
I thought everyone wrote poetry.
Years ago, a friend and I floated down a river in Missouri,
love taking shape in the air between us—
“I’ve noticed you don’t speak with proper grammar,” she observed, approvingly.
“John Dryden can go fuck himself,” I replied,
“The way people speak is what is magical about language.”
I ain't worried too much about grammar—
But I spell as good as I can.
Grammar’s like color theory:
useful, sure, but not the thing itself.
It helps you tell the difference between
"I liked what she said"
and
"Her words caught me,
held me up in the light of her living."
My brother, when we were kids, would irritate our mother
Saying “I gots a new basketball,” looking her right in the eye.
I never cared much for the word myself—
But I wouldn’t have punished him for speaking his truth.
She wanted us to bear the markers
of civilized society,
But–
As Ross might have said,
I gots no time for that.
I’d be shocked
To find anyone
who never sang in place of speaking.
So Many Reasons Why
When they diagnosed me I was in the middle of my divorce
Astonished at how I had come to find myself
In that time and place
I told my girlfriend I was extremely lucky. She said, no, I had worked hard to get where I was.
I watched a Palestinian child sob and shiver
On the dirt floor of a hospital tent
Her skin burned away. No anesthetic. No triage. No comfort.
I try to imagine what that feels like.
I fail.
My mom likes to say she worked hard to get where she is. She wasn’t lucky.
I think about Victor Jara. Somos cinco mil.
I try–and fail–to imagine how it feels
To sing for a better world,
And be forced to play guitar with no fingernails.
Maybe knowing you are forsaken is worse.
Maybe it’s the fingernail thing.
The national guard shot four year old Tanya Blanding with a tank while she hid in her living room.
A cop shot twelve year old Michael Ellerbe in the back.
Cops only come for me with warnings about driving too fast.
I’ve never even seen a police car at my parents’ house in the sticks.
My parents both told me I worked hard to get where I am.
They didn’t like hearing me say that I’m lucky.
When Adam and I got arrested
The cops knew his dad. (“Aren’t you Hot Rod’s boy?”)
They booked us and charged us and a few weeks later
The court case vanished into thin air
My parents say it wasn’t luck–it was because they hired a lawyer
When I was a child I had a good friend
His dad, in childhood, had been my dad’s good friend
My dad would take me into the woods and teach me to identify
Trees and plants and animal tracks
His dad taught him to buy his Sunday beer on Saturday and huff gasoline to get high.
I once drove by my friend’s house–not too long ago–intending to stop
I passed by instead
That evening my phone rang again and again
Where was I? Where was my friend?
His parents and siblings had been murdered.
The cops held him and did everything they could to get him to confess.
He still can’t convince himself they were wrong.
When I was a kid my parents bought an acre of land from Dad’s uncle for one dollar.
Gallery View
White names on black backgrounds
Silence
“What can we say about the way this writer uses pathos?”
Silence
White names on black backgrounds
John is the only one who talks
John is speaking up again.
“I think the author sounds disappointed.”
John is speaking up again.
John is the only one who talks.
One student in the classroom.
One set of eyes to contact.
One locus of discomfort to fill the silence
One presence to reassure
White names on black backgrounds
Silence
“How is everybody feeling today? Let’s take a few minutes to chat and warm up.”
Silence
White names on black backgrounds
Why Publish?
To be a writer
To write professionally
To make a buck
To prove that I am a writer
For recognition
For validity
For an audience
For a legacy
To teach
To castigate
To have something to take home and say, “I’m better than the person who left here.”
For competition
For dreams
For disillusionment
For posterity
Because thousands of shitty novels are published every day, and I need to prove to someone that I can write a shitty novel.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 